You wouldnt happen to be the fellow who programmed the Atari Jaguar conversion of Robinson Requiem back in the 90s would you?

Cyril Cogordan wrote:Hi, yes I am
It seems like there are a billion years ago that I did it, but I plead guilty ^^

Very pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Cogordan.

After 15 some years of waiting the Atari Jaguar community will finally be able to enjoy your hard work.

It's amazing the game finally realized after so many years. Is this the original game or it was recoded ?

I dont think it was recoded. It lists you as the version programmer. From what I read of your translated from French interview a few years ago you and the 3DO programmer opted to go with a polygon engine rather than a vowel one for the console systems. So it seems to be the same engine you were discussing.

I'm impressed, in my memories I've only done 3 masters CD of the game and it never been pressed, that's why it's amazing to see the final version. But yes, that's right, with David Ingels (3DO programmer), we've done a 3d engine for the game.

What made you decide to go for a polygon engine on the Jaguar rather than voxel? Would it not have been easier for the Jaguar to have done a voxel engine? Though for your first time working on the Jaguar your polygon engine is really impressive. Especially for a system not designed for 3d polygons. It moves right along really well.

If I remember correctly, the voxel version was pretty ugly... David worked on the 3do version at same time and he tried a 3D test of the land with better results, so we decided to do same on Jaguar and then we worked together on a polygons version of the render engine. The hardest part was to code it on the dsp/gpu. With time, I think that wasn't my best code, but it works

Well it really works good. More than a decent job for sure. Especially considering Atari probably gave you zero help, and bad tools to work with.

Can you tell if this is the final version?

If there is the cinematics, I think that is probably the final version, that was the last things I've included in the game.

How good was the help David Ingels got from 3do in working with their machine? Was it different than the help you may or may not have gotten from Atari? Did Atari give you any help at all?

David had first worked on a way to translate voxel coordinates to 3d then we each made a specific engine for 3DO and Jaguar.

Atari didn't provide any help, except basic toosl and programmers documentations. My only contact with Atari was a producer who had no idea how the machine worked. All code was done in ASM, for 68000 and for the GPU. In other words, many sleepless nights and headaches

The guys acting who plays the President is classic. Absolutely classic. Did you meet any of these actors who played these parts?

It's been a long time but if I remember correctly, the actors were friends of André Rocques they were in the same theater company. I have never met them in person. I'm not sure but I even think that one of the characters is played by André Rocques.

In an interview John Carmack said somethng to the effect that he wishes todays programmers had the experience programmers like he and you had where they had to work with assembly more, had to dig into the hardware more than they usually do these days. I'm paraphrasing to the best of my ability of course but it was something along those lines.

My question is, do you think programmers who didnt go through what you had to back in the day are somewhat 'soft', relying on libraries and not having the experiences you had?

The market has evolved, the techniques, machines and players are not the same as in the years 80-90. With the current consoles,we are no longer limited by the size of memory, CPU power and so on. Now the developers highlight the appearance rather than content, but that's because investors who only care about sales rather than the gameplay and fun.

Anyway, starting with assembler on a small machine is a good school to learn optimization, programming tips and maybe get a different approach to games.

Thanks for your time Mr. Cogordan.

What came after the Jaguar was the PS1 which for all it's greatness, ushered in corporate development and with it the bleached, repetitive, bland titles which for the most part we're still playing today. - David Wightman